Every advertiser knows something is amiss but not much better than that. The dashboard has traffic coming through, the numbers don’t seem too awful, but at face value, a deeper dive suggests it’s far from value for money. Yet nothing to put your finger on as to why.
In 9 out of 10 cases, the culprit is not within your ads or targeting but the very platform you’re running them on.
An ad network isn’t on the same level as the next – some are truly high-quality creations that bring quality traffic, give you the tools necessary to make intelligent adjustments, and genuinely care whether you do well.
The others? They’ll happily keep running your card through while your campaigns steadily fail. The problem is knowing which is which before you’ve spent a few months of budget with both.
It’s surprisingly easy to tell if you give your ad network a two-day review for transparency. You’re not starting new things, overhauling campaigns, and doing anything crazy; you’re assessing what’s already there and what’s already been said with a loaded question or two.
What to Assess in 24 Hours?
In a day, you have access to everything that’s already in your dashboard. Therefore, start accessing everything that truly matters – and impressions don’t matter (they’re just ego fodder unless they’re paying off).
How many clicks are happening across placements? If you’re under 0.1 or 0.2% consistently across the board, that’s a sign something’s wrong. Low CTR means poor targeting, terrible placements, or inventory quality that fails to exceed expected standards.
A solid ad network should at least get you industry averages across the board, and once you’re settled in, you should be crushing them.
How many conversions are happening? Yes, the most important metric is what you need them to do – sign up for something, fill out a form, or purchase – actually doing what you requested. Calculate what you’re paying per conversion for the last week and what you should be able to afford to pay.
If that inflationary number is creeping higher and higher over time rather than lower and lower, it’s likely that you’re not being connected with the right people.
Deeper data tracks how the network tracks where things come from – is it from real websites/apps showing where your ads appear or from a series of unnamed domains?
Strong networks won’t obscure this information – if you see sites like “crazycatlady.com” or generically suspicious names – or nothing at all – this is a bad sign.
Day Two: Assess What Happens When You Push Them
On day two of assessing your ad networks, it’s time to see how they respond to real-time issues. Every platform eventually has issues – campaigns need modification, tracking goes awry, budgeting shifts, etc. – but what separates the good from the time wasters is how they respond when their help is actually needed.
Open a support ticket/send a quick inquiry to your account manager about something specific regarding your campaigns. It doesn’t need to be an emergency; just something they need to answer. Then assess when they respond – do they acknowledge it?
How long does it take? Do they respond urgently with valuable insight relative to your request, or do they send a generic answer lifted from a template?
Decent networks return support tickets during business hours within a few hours and provide answers that acknowledge they’ve looked into your account.
If you’re waiting a full day on basic questions or getting answers that could apply to any operator on that same network/account – they don’t value you as their client.
Then take some time playing around with the platform – try setting up something new or making adjustments to something existing. Does it make sense or are you redirected like Alice through Wonderland to merely change a bid?
Can you duplicate what you need, pause what’s unnecessary, change target settings effectively, or does it actually take too long to find anything? These adjustments matter when you finally spot something in your data and need to respond quickly.
Also check reporting – is it exportable at all with the metrics you find relevant, or are preset measurements only those offered?
Can you break down data into device type used, geographic location, time of day, where ads actually appeared? When networks make reporting inaccessible, it’s typically because they don’t want you looking too deeply.
The Numbers You’ll Need After
By this time, you’ll have gathered what you hoped in two days of looking into things more deeply. Now it’s time to do some quick math. First up? What you’re really paying per thousand impressions. Take what you’ve spent thus far and divide it by total impressions generated; multiply that result by 1,000.
Now take whatever the network told you it would be when you signed up and see how drastically off if is – and be prepared to justify it in case normal bidding stuff accounts for substantial differences.
Now take what you’ve earned thus far by revenue from this network traffic and divide it by what you’ve spent.
For most entities, the minimum return on ad spend should be 3:1 for profits once costs are handled. If you’re still substantially below 2:1 without major red flags giving ways to improve upon that return, it’s likely traffic quality just isn’t there.
Consider how long your campaigns stabilize over time; when launching new ideas, how many days does it take for everything to stop fluctuating before a comfort zone emerges?
With solid networks, stability should emerge after about two days with meaningful data; within one week things should level out entirely. If after two weeks your campaigns are still bouncing all over the place it’s likely their targeting functionality can’t handle what you need.
When You Should Drop Everything?
Some flaws can be fixed; others merit termination from the get-go – and no amount of optimization is going to help.
If you’re seeing bot traffic (those perfectly rounded numbers in your analytics tool; clicks that happen too quickly; sessions lasting 0 seconds), that’s fraud – and no amount of apologizing or hypothetical suggestions will save your relationship.
Neither can unauthorized payment discrepancies. If they suddenly start charging more than they should or they can’t give you valid answers regarding financial transfer issues, cut ties now; these issues never sort themselves out later down the line.
The Next Steps
Now that you’ve taken stock of everything honestly over 48 hours spend deciding what’s good and what’s not; it’s time to determine where you stand.
If performance appears solid through good support and there’s visibility into improvements then stay put and continue improving your subsequent options.
If there were red flags – multiple especially around traffic quality or presentation shadiness – it’s time to explore other options.
In a competitive marketplace, there is no reason to settle for subpar partners just because transitioning sounds obnoxious; your ad network should make your job easier – even if it creates weekly headaches when it’s not the right one.
Your only responsibility when you’re with the right one is spending less time debating its functionality and more time making strategic decisions based on uptime potential – that’s when scaling begins.
